Rick Smith Emails [Centre County Prison]
| Submitted | March 1, 2017 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Rich Jones
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to Pennsylvania Right to Know Act, I hereby request the following records:
Any and all emails, including file attachments, sent to and from the email account of former warden Richard "Rick" Smith for the dates May 1, 2016 to August 31, 2016.
Please provide this files in digital form, preferably in ".mbox" file format.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Rich Jones
From: Natalie W. Corman
Please see the attached documents concerning the Right to Know Request.
Natalie W. Corman
Human Services Administrator/Deputy County Administrator
420 Holmes Street
Room 337
Bellefonte, PA 16823
(814) 355-6700
(814)355-6762 (direct)
nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov<mailto:nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov>
The information in this message may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is neither the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified any dissemination, distribution, unauthorized use, or copying of this communication is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and delete the communication from your computer. Thank you!
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~WRD000
From: Natalie W. Corman
Good afternoon. Before proceeding further, we would like confirmation from the requestor that payment will be made for the expected copies up to and exceeding $1,125. We will need to confirm the plans for payment and then we will proceed with collecting the records and redacting as necessary. Based on previous requests and concerns about payment, I wanted to reach out.
Please respond by the close of business tomorrow if you are able to. Thank you very much.
Natalie W. Corman
Human Services Administrator/Deputy County Administrator
420 Holmes Street
Room 337
Bellefonte, PA 16823
(814) 355-6700
(814)355-6762 (direct)
nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov<mailto:nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov>
The information in this message may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is neither the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified any dissemination, distribution, unauthorized use, or copying of this communication is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and delete the communication from your computer. Thank you!
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From: Rich Jones
Hello Natalie -
That seems very steep given that these are digital files, so there are no printing or transportation costs. For a narrowly-scoped, digital-only request, this is an extremely high cost estimate for this kind of FOIA request. Can you please give me a reasonable explanation of those fees and why they are applicable, as per the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law? For example, how many pages there are, how much time it will take to process them, and the cost of redaction per hour. There are digital services which lower the costs and time of redaction by many orders of magnitude which you may be interested in.
Thanks,
Rich
From: Natalie W. Corman
While your request is for emails, they are not "electronic files" in and of themselves. The electronic file is the entire mailbox which has to be modified to complete the response (specific time frame) and to redact information in each message and/or attachment that is protected under provisions of the Pennsylvania Right to Know (RTK) law. RTK does not require the agency to provide the records in an electronic format unless that record presently exists in such format. The fees quoted are for copies of the responsive documents based upon our review of the number of emails (and attachments thereto) in the mailbox over the period of time requested. We charge $0.25/copy and all postage/delivery expense. None of the estimate is for any charges for personnel time as those are not presently permitted under the RTK. The agency does not have any other program or service to redact the information in the emails or otherwise produce the records and the RTK does not require the agency to purchase such programs or services in order to respond to requests under the RTK.
If you wish to modify the request to restrict the inquiry to specific types of emails or a different time frame, the total amount due will decrease but we will still need to produce the records in paper format in order to redact the protected information. Please advise if you wish to proceed with this request and we will confirm the actual amount of payment to be paid for the requested information.
Natalie W. Corman
Human Services Administrator/Deputy County Administrator
420 Holmes Street
Room 337
Bellefonte, PA 16823
(814) 355-6700
(814)355-6762 (direct)
nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov<mailto:nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov>
The information in this message may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is neither the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified any dissemination, distribution, unauthorized use, or copying of this communication is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and delete the communication from your computer. Thank you!
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From: Rich Jones
Hello again, Natalie!
I have to admit that I find this response confusing. There are in fact many standard ways to redact a digital file while leaving it in the same format in which it presently exists (without printing it out and mailing it).
For instance, for text files and standard emails, the text simply has to be deleted and a copy of the file saved. For PDF documents, the standard Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX PDF provide redaction and annotation functionality. For all other documents, the "Print Screen" and "Paint" functionality of all modern operating systems can be used for digital redaction.
These methods will save your department lots of time and money so would be worth looking into. I can provide more resources and assistance if that would be useful to you.
If you aren't interested in using these standard digital redaction techniques, please send me the final invoice for this request.
Thank you!,
Rich Jones
From: Rich Jones
Hi Natalie, just wanted to see if you've got any updates on this.
Thanks,
Rich
From: Natalie W. Corman
As we collect this information, we are currently 17 days into the requested date with 1,500 sheets produced, including 2 pages per sheet. As we continue this endeavor, the task is producing large amounts of paperwork and time as we have previously discussed.
Attached is a one page sheet documenting the inbox of the requested employee. We have this for the entire inbox, sent folder, and any other e-mails in folders.
We could provide you with sheets like this for e-mails during this time period requested. We suggest you review these pages and determine what e-mails you are seeking. By narrowing the scope of the request, it saves all parties involved time and you as the requestor, money. The sheets that you would review would be approximately 50 pages, with 2 columns per page.
If you continue to want to receive all pages of these e-mails, we will continue to move forward.
Please let us know if you want the e-mail sheets to review and/or we proceed with all requested e-mails and attachments.
Thank you very much.
Natalie W. Corman
Human Services Administrator/Deputy County Administrator
420 Holmes Street
Room 337
Bellefonte, PA 16823
(814) 355-6700
(814)355-6762 (direct)
nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov<mailto:nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov>
The information in this message may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is neither the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified any dissemination, distribution, unauthorized use, or copying of this communication is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and delete the communication from your computer. Thank you!
From: Rich Jones
Hi Natalie,
Thank you very much for the status update. I can certainly appreciate your desire to cut down on the workload, however I require all the records as requested for my free public journalistic investigation, as per the PA Right to Know law. However, if you send me the index pages that you have compiled so far, perhaps relevant information will reveal itself, which will be useful for both of us.
Thank you very much,
Rich
From: Center County Correctional Facility
A letter stating the requester must agree to or prepay assessed or estimated fees in order for the agency to continue processing the request.
From: Margaret N. Gray
Dear Mr. Jones,
Attached please find a letter in reference to your written request for records. Natalie Corman with whom you have communicated is out of the office this week and I am responding directly.
Sincerely,
Margaret Gray
Margaret N. Gray, Administrator
Centre County Government
Willowbank Office Building
420 Holmes Street
Bellefonte, PA 16823
From: Natalie W. Corman
Good afternoon. We have completed the process of acquiring and redacting the requested records. At this time, we request a payment of $7.49 for the cost of postage and for the flash drive. Electronic copies with redactions are being submitted via the flash drive.
Please make the check and/or money order out to: Centre County Government
ATTN: Right to Know
420 Holmes Street
Suite 151
Bellefonte, PA 16823
Upon receipt of payment, the records will be mailed to the address provided.
Thank you very much.
Natalie W. Corman
Human Services Administrator/Deputy County Administrator
420 Holmes Street
Room 337
Bellefonte, PA 16823
(814) 355-6700
(814)355-6762 (direct)
nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov<mailto:nwcorman@centrecountypa.gov>
The information in this message may be privileged, confidential, and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is neither the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified any dissemination, distribution, unauthorized use, or copying of this communication is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and delete the communication from your computer. Thank you!
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~WRD000
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
Please find enclosed a check for $7.49 to satisfy the fee associated with the attached public records request.
Thank you.
From: Center County Correctional Facility
A copy of documents responsive to the request.
There are too many files to display on this communication. See all files
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on March 1, 2017. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Natalie W. Corman
The flash drive was put in the mail last week in response to your payment.
Thank you very much.
Natalie W Corman
Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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